Direct observation of spin correlations in an artificial triangular lattice Ising spin system with grazing-incidence small-angle neutron scattering

Petai Pip; Artur Glavic; Sandra Helen Skjærvø; Anja Weber; Andrew Smerald; Kirill Zhernenkov; Naëmi Leo; Frédéric Mila; Laetitia Philippe; Laura J. Heyderman

doi:10.1039/D1NH00043H

Direct observation of spin correlations in an artificial triangular lattice Ising spin system with grazing-incidence small-angle neutron scattering†

Petai Pip,

‡*^abc Artur Glavic,

‡*^d Sandra Helen Skjærvø,^ab Anja Weber,

^ab Andrew Smerald,^e Kirill Zhernenkov,^f Naëmi Leo,

^g Frédéric Mila,

^h Laetitia Philippeⁱ and Laura J. Heyderman

^ab

Author affiliations

* Corresponding authors

^a Laboratory for Mesoscopic Systems, Department of Materials, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland
E-mail: ppip@student.ethz.ch

^b Laboratory for Multiscale Materials Experiments, Paul Scherrer Institut, Villigen PSI, Switzerland

^c Laboratory for Mechanics of Materials and Nanostructures, Empa (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research), 3602 Thun, Switzerland

^d Laboratory for Neutron and Muon Instrumentation, Paul Scherrer Institut, Villigen PSI, Switzerland

^e Atmospheric Environmental Research (IMK-IFU), Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 82467 Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany

^f Jülich Centre for Neutron Science at Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, 85748 Garching, Germany

^g CIC nanoGUNE BRTA, 20018 Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain

^h Institute of Physics, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

ⁱ Manufacture des Montres ROLEX SA, Research & Development, CH-2501 Biel/Bienne, Switzerland

Abstract

The triangular lattice with Ising magnetic moments is an archetypical example of geometric frustration. In the case of dipolar-coupled out-of-plane moments, the geometric frustration results in a disordered classical spin-liquid state at higher temperatures while the system is predicted to transition to an anti-ferromagnetic stripe ground state at low temperatures. In this work we fabricate artificial triangular Ising spin systems without and with uniaxial in-plane compression to tune the nature and temperature of the correlations. We probe the energy scale and nature of magnetic correlations by grazing-incidence small-angle neutron scattering. In particular, we apply a newly-developed empirical structure-factor model to describe the measured short-range correlated spin-liquid state, and find good agreement with theoretical predictions. We demonstrate that grazing-incidence neutron scattering on our high-quality samples, in conjunction with detailed modeling of the scattering using the Distorted Wave Born Approximation, can be used to experimentally quantify the spin-liquid-like correlations in highly-frustrated artificial spin systems.

Nanoscale Horizons

Direct observation of spin correlations in an artificial triangular lattice Ising spin system with grazing-incidence small-angle neutron scattering†

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Direct observation of spin correlations in an artificial triangular lattice Ising spin system with grazing-incidence small-angle neutron scattering

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